


the last thing you want comes in first

by doubtthestars



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Magical Accidents, Wishes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 23:57:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14532174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doubtthestars/pseuds/doubtthestars
Summary: history doesn't repeat itself. it only wiggles a little.A wish on a trophy doesn't mean it's all personal victories.





	the last thing you want comes in first

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redandgold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/gifts).



> “As I grew up, I looked up to him and then we evolved together and we’ve had similar careers. We’ve both won a lot and we’ve often played against each other. I think Italian football won’t have another goalkeeper like him.” - Iker Casillias

He wishes for something.

It’s nothing concrete, nothing so certain with words like redemption or happiness, but he kisses the trophy and gives it away just as easily. Porto isn’t his, not really, but he’s glad to be a part of it. He’s glad to be a part of something still.

 

He wakes up feeling strange. His walls, he decides as he watches the sun peek in through the gaps of the curtains. They were white as an eggshell when he went to bed. Now, they are yellower, daisies caught in the sun. Iker reaches for his phone, still on the nightstand, tests his combination, gets rewarded with the day after last and shakes his head.

The feeling doesn’t go away. It tugs at his mind like a child would his clothes. He gets up, the slow, steady drum of his heart in his ears. His bare feet are cold on the hardwood. The curtains innocently mock him for the lingering fear in the back of his mind. He pushes the dark and heavy fabric away from the window.

Madrid shines back at him serenely.

Iker’s brain is slow to understand that this is not his place, that last night he went to bed in Portugal and woke up in Spain. His phone is still in his hand, gripped tight with the realization that this wasn’t some hallucination brought on by drunken revelry.

Instinct dictates he call someone, and he does, the dial tone harsh against his ear before the click of an answer reaches him.

“Tell me this isn’t a dream.” Because it feels like one, in the haze of the early morning, without the ghost of some unfinished business dogging his steps. He doesn’t feel the ache of his shoulders, the taste of foreign air in the back of his throat that should feel silly to compare but he does. It’s not there. None of it is there.

“Are you asking me if you’re awake? Because I’ve got to be honest, I’m not sure _I’m_ awake right now.” Sergio yawns.

“You should be up anyway.” The words are familiar even when his brain is still sluggish, and his hands are cold with fear. He paces, carefully running through the improbable to the impossible, from some poorly-thought prank to magic. He’d heard about it, once, a distant memory about the World Cup at home and wanting so bad it ached.

It was a little blasphemous and a habit of superstition, but every boy knew to kiss a trophy when it was in front of him-- from first to last, Iker had done it faithfully on every win without consequence, without change.

“Iker? Is something wrong?” He’s been silent for too long. He wants to say yes, and ask a million questions besides. He wants to know how and why, but nothing comes out. His eyes keep catching the street and the dusty brick and the familiar gate outside. It brings back all the wounds he’d quietly kept under wraps. The ache of home and football not being in the same place any more was furiously silent.

“I don’t know.”

 

His luck doesn’t stretch far enough to get him called up for international duty. He tells himself it’s better that way. The numb, hysterical part of his brain wouldn’t be able to handle if he’d managed to transplant Lopetegui with a whole other personality along with giving himself Real back. There was such a thing as too much good in a fantasy world.

He checked his messages, Porto’s standings, La Liga, and finally googled his own press. He retired from Spain, voluntarily. The press conference is a world away from the one he’d erased from his history. His eyes weren’t nearly as red in this video for one.

They hadn’t won the Champions, but they had pulled off a miracle to win the league. At least, reading between the lines of several articles had given him the impression that the season was difficult in ways no one could control. Iker wondered if there was some version of him who had wished himself out from under the duty of captaincy. He could see Keylor played just as many games and Sergio had worn the band just as many times as he did.

Iker was leaving on his own terms, a slow goodbye to Madrid.

He wondered if that was more painful, but didn’t think it could possibly be worse than what he had lived through already. It was a different sort of hurt, he concluded. The close of a chapter instead of throwing the whole book away.

“You’re quiet.” Raúl had picked the restaurant, but if Iker had a certain purpose to the meeting, well it was lost with the rest of his memories.

“Have you ever woken up and been lost?” He tries to be flippant, but there’s a strong possibility of Iker having lost his mind sometime between last night and this morning. He had checked for injuries, head or otherwise, but there wasn’t a hint or clue of what he knew as true and this reality replacing it.

Raúl chews on his fish, slowly. His only reaction to the question is a raised eyebrow.

“Sure, I have. You lose yourself to the obligation and lose sight of the football, Iker, we’ve gone through this. If it’s time, you know yourself. This season was tough on you, I know.” There’s no pity, just understanding, knowledge from one captain to another. Iker wants to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. He had wished himself into some alternate reality where he _wants_ to leave Real Madrid for good and can’t even find comfort in the simple fact of getting to do it his way, because he doesn’t remember.

“You carry Madrid for so long in here, you don’t have to worry about it disappearing after leaving.” He taps a finger against the breast of his suit jacket.

“Look at your friend Buffon, he’s done alright for himself, hasn’t he? It’s not the end of the world, leaving.” Iker chokes. His blood freezes, the sensation of wrongness slips down his back like ice cubes.

“I’m sorry, I--” He stares down at his lap. His phone is a dark mirror reflecting his stunned face. It’s rude, but he has to know. It only takes a few taps to get a picture, for Iker to understand how fate intervened and displaced him.

Gianluigi "Gigi" Buffon is an Italian professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Serie A club Parma and the Italy national team.

 

There’s horror, then guilt and anger mingling in his gut. Iker doesn’t know how to fix it, doesn’t know if it _can_ be fixed. He doesn’t understand.

If some sort of exchange was needed for the wish to work, for this fantasy to be reached, he wouldn’t have chosen Gigi to be lucky loser, ever. Iker knew Gigi, _knew_ he was at the same crossroads this Iker seemed to be in, between leaving and staying. The retirement pact be damned, he knew Gigi was going to put himself into the fire again and again for Juventus-- at least until they called time on him, or Iker managed to fucking magically alter his fate to end up at Parma.

He calls him, because he’s infinitely better at self-flagellation than he is at staring at walls.

“Iker, how are you?” Gigi doesn’t sound any different than the last time they had spoken. Nothing that he can detect by the greeting alone anyway.

“Confused,” He goes for honesty, making Gigi laugh.

“I see. You’re always welcome here, to take your mind off of your confusions.” It’s suggestive, barely pinging, but always present. It was always like that with him. Iker could take him up on it or leave it on the table, but Gigi never faulted him for his choice. Impulse driven by guilt, by needing the assurance that he hadn’t done some irreparable damage to his old friend made Iker trip over the 'no' he would usually give.

“Okay,” He agrees as casually as he can

“Really?” Gigi pressed, to make absolutely sure, the hint of surprise drowned out by delight was apparent in his tone.

“Yes, I could use the time on the beach.” It was better than fighting the urge to drive to Portugal, and it was better than breaking into an office to steal a trophy.

“Good, good, I can be your tour guide. There’s a place I think you would like to see.”

“You didn’t know I would say yes,” He points out.

“I believed I would get my way eventually,” The words were warm, affectionate. “I’m a romantic, and very persuasive.” Iker laughs, because what else is there to do when faced with impossibilities and men like Gigi.

 

Palmeria is the beach he is promised, but Gigi pulls him in a different direction before they cross the waters to the island from the small harbor city.

The church is not so grand as the location of it, high on the point of craggy rock cliffs. It looks carved out of the rock itself, grey with white. Iker doesn't indulge the urge to be a tourist very often but it feels easier, displaced by old folktales out of his own history, to be a stranger. Gigi watches him from behind his sunglasses, comfortable, barely incognito, but still somehow different than the Gigi he is familiar with on a pitch.

"It's dramatic," he declares with a quirk of his lips. Iker gets a bark of laughter for his trouble before they move onto the winding uphill path. The natural light filters through the windows. The pews are ordinary wood with benches to kneel. He isn't sure if it's the motif of black and white stripes of the building, or just regular uneasiness that presses guilt into his ribs, reminds him that this wouldn't be the life his friend and colleague would've led if not for him.

"You look worried." Gigi looks around to the group of older women and the odd tourists in with them with an eyebrow up in suspicion. 

"Why did you want me to see this?" He changes the subject.

Gigi points to the far wall to a statue in a domed alcove of old brick. Iker moves closer to it. He can barely make out the face of the man but he'd read the signs well enough. It must have been Saint Peter.

"He's small, to be patron of this monument." Gigi shrugs.

"The church wasn't always dedicated to Peter. Saints always appear smaller than they really are. They were human, just like you or I. He reminds me of you in some ways." Iker stares at the statue a little more, the disc of a halo on top of his head, the raised hand of benediction, all done in dark metal. 

"Funny, he looks more like you to me." Saint Peter looks down on them, sitting, waiting and Iker feels the lump in his throat all the more.

 

The beach doesn't distract him.

Iker closes his eyes briefly. He had thought Gigi might know him well enough to figure out his ruse, but he stays infuriatingly silent beyond some strange and long looks. It was up to him, as always, to ruin his own good time. He confesses his circumstances, gauging Gigi's disbelief by the rise of his brow. 

“I don’t know much about fate, but you’re not the center of the universe.” Gigi is gentle in his reply, not unkind in his rebuke. Iker stills. It's been a strange five days of keeping an impossible secret tucked under the fatigue and worry of being someone he's not. Out of everybody and anybody, Iker needed Gigi to understand.

"Do you believe me?"

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. It is nice to know, somewhere I stayed, but it doesn’t change things here and now. I told your other self this, but I didn’t want to be treated like an old man who didn’t know what was coming, patted on the back while the ship was taking on water. It was better this way, I said my farewells, gave it my best before I went. I left with hope for Juventus' future without me.” It's the truth. Iker can see it clearly in Gigi's eyes. 

A future with another Gigi between the posts, while Iker found some sort of compromise at Madrid. The mental picture slides into place for a moment like a skipping film reel, overlapping what he knew and what he was experiencing currently, making Iker understand the mechanics and purpose for just a second, before it all vanishes, escapes like smoke. 

"Why Parma? Why not-" he doesn't finish the question, doesn't know how to.

"I think that convinces me more of your story, than anything else. I must have gotten that question a dozen times when the transfer was announced." He says humourlessly. 

“All you've ever known is Real Madrid, Iker." Gigi's hand comes up to lightly cradle his cheek and Iker lets him, grounds himself in the touch. 

"I didn’t come to Parma to win trophies. I came to say goodbye. There are no guarantees in football, but I am grateful for all of it. My whole journey, good and bad, was learning who I was, learning about who I could become. I stayed in Italy because it's who I am. The question then, is who are you, Iker?" 

 

He wakes up with a start. Iker stares at the ceiling, counting seconds along with his heartbeat.

If it was just a dream, it certainly drove the message home. He needed to move forward with who he was, even with his heart still steeped in Madrid. Iker was still Iker without that badge on his chest. 

It was time. 

Watching the Lisbon game end in a tie with everyone is a quiet relief. Nothing changes, but Iker feels lighter, lets himself laugh and hug the others. Lets himself get picked up like a child and set on shoulders as the confetti comes down. It had taken four years for Porto to get back to the top spot. It will take Iker some time yet to figure his place out and where he wants to be among them.

He wishes for nothing.

Nothing but this moment, nothing with words like redemption or happiness because he already has it. He kisses the trophy and gives it away just as easily. 


End file.
